


Job Description: Trickster

by JayBarou



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 13:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5250278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBarou/pseuds/JayBarou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki tries to get out of Odin's plots, but ends up tripping in everyone else's. Meanwhile the Midgardian is making everything more difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Job Description: Trickster

**Author's Note:**

> So it sarted like: Odin wants Loki to get a crappy summer job, Loki decides to become something femenine to frustrate Odin, but when Loki goes to pick up a human: oh, no, he is cute.  
> Then the crack plot bunny grew legs.

Loki didn’t see any fairness in it; Thor had never had to earn his keep, Loki shouldn’t be forced to do so. However, Odin didn’t see it that way. Thor was, apparently, working for Asgard every time he went on a stupid quest, which meant running around riding his high horse with his friends, terrorizing the realms into obedience.

Since Loki avoided those trips like a Muspelheim Jotnar avoids the cold poles, the Allfather had decided that Loki had to be one of those underpaid summer apprentices if he wanted to keep buying rare books for his studies.

Loki was perfectly aware that none of those stupid jobs would be enough to buy more than the basic tomes created for people with the attention span of a… of a Thor. Those usually had titles like “Magic for Beginners,” “Become a Seidr Master with ten easy steps” or “So You Think You Can Spell.” Loki loathed all of them and secretly hoped the authors wouldn’t die swiftly or painlessly.

Buying the right books would be impossible. It was just Odin being his wise self, for a given value of wise, which in Loki’s world was a shortened form of “I’m king, therefore I am right”. Humiliating Loki in little ways was one of Odin’s hobbies; Asgard knew it by the name of “Teaching that arrogant princeling a lesson in humility”. Hypocrites, all of them.

Of course Loki retaliated. He didn’t join Thor, he didn’t go to the armory as an apprentice, nor did he contact the butcher. Instead, he considered briefly a career with the seamstresses, which would shame Odin to no end. Then he thought about the local brothel, but the clientele were people like Thor’s friends, and the revulsion was far stronger than the will to shame Odin.

He ended up joining the cavalry of Valkyries. Technically anyone could do the job; practically, no man had ridden with them since the times before Bor. It had been a vague, harmless idea until the precise moment when Odin, red in the face, had heatedly prohibited Loki to join them. “A task for virginal, frail women, not a respectable choice,” Odin had said.

Loki was probably going to send the old man to an early grave, and he wouldn’t be burdened with an ounce of remorse. He joined the riders.

Not very surprisingly, his experience within a group of females was better than with the male counterparts. Sorceresses had already been eager to teach little Loki, healers had been kind when he went from patient to student, and Valkyries were just the same. All of them had been a little wary at the beginning and fully accepting once Loki failed to underestimate or lecture them in their own arts.

Sif had always experienced the opposite reaction when she tried to join the warriors, the weapons smiths, the guards; she had to prove that she was ten times better than them to gain their grudging respect. Small mercies for Loki, in that respect. He silently admired Sif for her bullheaded perseverance, even if he thought it was all directed in a terrible direction.

The Valkyries were knowledgeable in the ways of the Yggdrasil. They collected warrior souls from all the realms, of course they couldn’t depend on the Bifrost, given the magnitude of their work. They knew ways to travel the portals without startling the horses, smaller paths Loki didn’t know about, and the best taverns across the nine without any warriors in sight.

That last part was a consequence of too much exposure to the too-happy souls of recently deceased warriors. Valkyries told stories about groping men and more than awkward horse rides that had ended with a _‘soul fell from the horse, couldn’t be retrieved’_ in their reports, they had learnt to avoid fighters outside of work.

The afterdeath cavalry (to warriors’ dismay if word ever got out) was very open about how much they didn’t enjoy a man’s company, in every sense of the word. Not all of them, certainly, but it was a wide majority. Loki had noticed several riders, Minn and their captain, Tveir, for example, who couldn’t stop looking at Hela when she crossed paths with them. Ervinna and Skrifa rode together so often that there was no doubt they were lovers.

Anyway, Loki already had a healthy dislike toward warriors, his riding skills were on point, and travelling the realms was part of who he was; adapting was no problem at all. Oh! And he aced at the requirement of being pretty, because Norns forbid that the mounting silhouette of a Valkyrie looked any less than spectacular while picking up the glorified trash after a battle.

His only complain was how the ultimate beneficiary of their work was Odin. Their task was to pick strong souls to burn before Hela could, and produce the Odinforce with them. Oh, yes, that’d be a disappointment for the warriors, should they ever know that there weren’t glorious ghost-battles to win in some other mysterious other land.

Loki had not been very shocked when the Valkyries had told him. He had known that there was not much after death; knowing that Odin was harvesting souls to fuel his power was, well, redundant. He already did that with the living, after all.

All in all, Loki was sure of having brought shame to Odin, and he was comfortable, dare he say even happy.

 Odin was a trickster at heart, though, and by the time the coronation came, Loki had fallen yet again in one of his webs. The Valkyries needed Loki, and so he didn’t have time to do something about the fatuous coronation. Loki could try to goad one of Thor’s many enemies into attacking Asgard, but it needed to be a very stupid enemy, because the palace would be swarming with guards.

No, in the end Asgard wasn’t his business. If Odin wanted it in ruins, Odin would get ruins; Loki wouldn’t move a finger to spare Asgard the thunder storm. Instead he’d ride with the Valkyries. Odin obviously didn’t want him anywhere near the throne and Loki would comply with the old man’s foolish decision just for once.

It was the heroes’ way: defeating the enemy when it was showy enough, when there was rubble to stand on, and posing with a convenient ray of light, when there were already lost lives to make the fight a honorable revenge. Heroes always stood on someone’s loss.

Loki believed in a different kind of heroes; the silent ones. Real heroes prevented the disaster, and were never depicted proud on a pile of rubble, because the mere presence of rubble was proof of failure.

 Even with that description, Loki wasn’t a hero.

Or he didn’t intend to be one this time. He had saved Thor’s hide enough times as it was. Thor should learn something for once and start to avoid disasters on his own.

Norns had a different plan, though.

On the day of the coronation, the Valkyrias were called to Asgard’s vault. Like ravens and vultures, their mounts were trained to seek destruction and fight. Riders usually reached a fight in time to see the end and reap the reward. It wasn’t strange for a Valkyrie to own a raven pet too, although Loki had avoided them, not wanting to be Odin’s shadow as well as Thor’s.

The horses were guided by battle-inclined souls, instead of smell, so they tended to arrive before the scavengers. Thus, Loki, two Valkyries, and their Captain were in the Vault of the palace while the crowd cheered Thor a few floors above them. The four horsewomen, Loki included, waited patiently, invisible to the sight of living beings, waiting for whatever was about to happen. They didn’t have to wait much until three Jotnar, to Loki’s surprise, appeared through an Yggdrasil path to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters.

Of course the Destroyer swiftly prevented the theft, and then it was their turn to work before Hela could claim those souls. It should have been a mere procedure, then Loki would go back to thinking who could have betrayed Thor in this way; but to collect the confused Jotnar, Loki’s hand touched the warrior’s. Just to help him mount. But his hand turned blue, and then his arm, and he felt his back turning cold where the anthropomorphic manifestation of the giant’s soul sat, behind him.

There was a pregnant silence.

Loki looked in panic to the other riders, and the other warriors. None of the Valkyries had turned, this wasn’t customary. Loki felt their thinking eyes on him, and they weren’t stupid. They had lived in Asgard for all their lives, and some of them had lived through the war against the Frost Giants. Loki wasn’t granted the mercy of denial; the answer was clear as day.

Loki was on the verge of hysteria. He should run and hide, or fight the witnesses, he should hide hide hide, seek answers, go back, fight back, demand answers, run, kill, run away…

“WHAT IS THIS, LADIES?” their Captain, Tveir, roared. “We are already late, no slacking off on my shift.”

Once she had their attention, she turned her steed and moved through the veil-dimension the Valkyries used like she expected them to follow without complains. Of course they obeyed, because she had earned their respect and a little fear too. The riders and the charges got up to her speed and kept a questioning silence.

“This isn’t new amongst us, mounters,” she said while looking ahead. “This isn’t our first secret and it won’t be the last. We will treat it like we treat all the others: We protect ours.”

The riders nodded briefly and rushed to the Valhalla device, not letting the souls behind them time to react. Loki moved his hands to spurn his horse too, but Tveir stilled his hand.

“And you, we are still going to need you today. Yes, you are one of us in case it didn’t get through your little royal head, so don’t get out of my sight until we are done. Now do your job and drop that in the Valhalla as you are supposed to do.”

“But the Asgardian prince is one of ours?” the soul behind Loki asked. He was regaining sentience; that was bad, it spoiled the battle rage. Loki knew it, so he rushed to catch up with his peers.

The women of Asgard, Loki had found, were marvelous creatures full of chaos. As tradition dictated, females ended up with the most mundane tasks, the worst positions, and they were treated worse than their male counterparts, so they were the first in line to bend the rules, ally themselves with outcasts or lower races, and band together against the law.

Tveir, was a good woman, a good captain who knew her riders like the back of her hand. She assigned Loki all the shifts that day, trying to keep him occupied and grounded. Loki didn’t know what he’d have done with all that time in his hands; nothing good, for sure. Instead, he gossiped with his companions about nothings, while some of them subrepticiously, but not unkindly, dropped significant information about the Frost Giant War.

The drama unfurled further when their horses took two teams of riders to Jotunheim in time to witness the blunt conversation between Laufey and Thor, and the phrase “The house of Odin is full of traitors” which was an obvious attempt to blame Loki, innocent as he was for once.

Loki couldn’t help but wonder, about his supposed brother, and the giant that sired him, according to rumor, about Odin, and about whose souls they’d come to collect. Maybe Thor would die, maybe the Warriors Three. In either case, Loki couldn’t do much, but witness.

Thor didn’t have anyone to hold him back, so he charged forward against the giants and the fight started. It was unequal, especially without a mage by their side, all of them had frostbite when the Bifrost opened, Odin came, words were exchanged, and the battle escalated to a full out war. It was logical, in Loki’s opinion, now that the giants knew of at least one path into Asgard that wasn’t controlled by Heimdall.

Loki collected more giant souls and his skin turned again, but he avoided dwelling on it, despite some curious stares and prodding questions.

He only came back home after a stern talk with his captain, during which he had been told in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t allowed to quit. He had to come in again the next day. No word would get out, even if he left one day. She was kind and understanding, in a way.

Loki wasn’t even out of the stables when Silfur Æð and Lamadýr came to him; he wish he had been allowed to have them as friends when he was younger. Asgard wouldn‘t have been the same with them.

“Loki, my dear, we have been thinking…” Silfur put an arm over Loki’s shoulders, short as she was. It forced Loki to walk hunched.

“…Odin needs the Odinforce support while he is sleeping…” Lamadýr spoke. She always looked so innocent, Loki could hardly believe when she insinuated something devious.

“...It would be unfortunate, if someone were to meddle with his life-juice...“ Silfur stage-whispered.

“...The wrong soul in that device could do a lot of damage...“ Lamadýr said normally.

“...put some nasty nightmares in our benebolent ruler‘s head,“  Silfur finished with a bitter tone.

After a few steps, Loki asked outright: “Why?“ They answered eerly syncronized.

“We have been lied ‘for our own good‘ before.“

“Asgard wasn‘t warned about you...“

“...and you weren‘t warned about Asgard.“

“Hardly seems fair.“

“We don‘t like it.“

And with that they left him alone, thinking their work there was done. Loki walked through the palace halls; he peeked into the healing rooms, with four beds still full of life, greeted the healers, and gossiped with them, so he learnt how the warriors had come barely alive and Thor had been banished. Odin’s sleep was old news by then, but Frigga was welding Gunggir, and that was good.

Loki visited his adopted parents’ room for a few minutes only. Frigga was so tired that she could barely hold the scepter, but she smiled kindly and left her husband’s side to keep Asgard standing while the old man rested. Loki saw the tiredness under her eyes and he didn’t have the heart to importune her with questions. Loki had much to think about that night. 

Of course he wanted answers, but Odin was going to say that he loved Loki, whether it was a lie or not. Loki couldn’t trust in the words of a cornered trickster who’d do and say anything to keep his plans moving. He could trust years of experience, though, he could trust the years of Frigga comforting him after a swift and passionless dismissal of Odin.

Loki could try to Be an Aesir. He could do something so big that all of Asgard should recognize his worth, but… he couldn’t just point a massive weapon to their enemies, end a war before it killed dozens of warriors, and be recognized as a hero. It only sounded well in theory, and even if he used the Casket of Ancient Winters, he would risk the Jotnar getting their hands on the treasure.

No, this was his. His problem. Not even his parents’ problem. It was a matter of Loki learning this about himself, and resenting Odin a bit for hiding it for so long. So the answer to put his mind to rest, had to be Loki’s, the answer had to be…

“What kind of soul would give Odin a bad time?”

 …had to be mischief.

Silfur Æð and Lamadýr looked at each other and grinned.

“I have been talking to Hela, she will know,“ Lamadýr had a blinding smile.

“And what, exactly, have you been talking about with Hela?“ Loki raised an elegant eyebrow. Lamadýr blushed, Silfur sniggered, and both led Loki to Hela‘s company after a few discrete words.

It wasn‘t a comfortable meeting in Loki's opinion. Hela was mad at the job the Valkyries did: stealing from her, but she resented Odin far more than his pawns, so she was more than glad of their visit. She told them that they needed a restless, mortal soul, unwilling to die. And she knew just the right mortal, who was about to have a brush with death again.

**Author's Note:**

> All the names of the Valkyries are names (or huge and silly modifications) of people I’ve met on AO3 and Tumblr. You probably know them, so you can try to guess:  
> Silfur Æð  
> Tveir  
> Ervinna  
> Skrifa  
> Minn  
> Lamadýr
> 
> I've been rereading this one so many times my head spins and I can't figure out why, but I don't like it too much, and by the hitcount and the comment count, you don't like it too much either, so I might delete it. Sorry if you subscribed


End file.
